I am what is mine. Personality is the original personal property.

I am what is mine. Personality is the original personal property.

Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They read more

Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They become responsive to grandiose schemes, and will display unequaled steadfastness, formidable energies and a special fitness in the performance of tasks which would stump superior people. It seems paradoxical that defeat in dealing with the possible should embolden people to attempt the impossible, but a familiarity with the mentality of the weak reveals that what seems a path of daring is actually an easy way out: It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings. For when we fail in attaining the impossible we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task.

Since the social victim has been oppressed by society, he comes to feel that his individual life will be improved read more

Since the social victim has been oppressed by society, he comes to feel that his individual life will be improved more by changes in society than by his own initiative. Without realizing it, he makes society rather than himself the agent of change. The power he finds in his victimization may lead him to collective action against society, but it also encourages passivity within the sphere of his personal life.

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

...the more original a discovery the more obvious it seems afterwards.

...the more original a discovery the more obvious it seems afterwards.

It is better to correct your own faults than those of another.

It is better to correct your own faults than those of another.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

To illustrate the difference between the innovator and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even imagine that any improvement read more

To illustrate the difference between the innovator and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even imagine that any improvement is possible, we need only refer to a passage in Engel's most famous book. Here, in 1878, Engels apodictically announced that military weapons are "now so perfected that no further progress of any revolutionizing influence is any longer possible." Henceforth "all further [technological] progress is by and large indifferent for land warfare. The age of evolution is in this regard essentially closed." This complacent conclusion shows in what the achievement of the innovator consists: he accomplishes what other people believe to be unthinkable and unfeasible.